August 2026 Startup Grant Awarded to SheFlag.com

We’re excited to announce the August $10,000 Startup Grant recipient. Congratulations to Nancy Ketola, Founder & Elizabeth Godek, CEO of SheFlag.com.

Recently, WomensNet Advisory Board member Jama Hernandez sat down with Nancy and Elizabeth for an exclusive interview. You can listen to their conversation and view the transcript below.

Video Transcript

Jama: Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Today, we are going to interview our grant winners for the month. We have with us Elizabeth Godeck and Nancy Ketola with SheFlag.com. They are doing innovative things in women’s sports, and we’re so excited to have you with us today. So to get started, please tell us a little bit about your business and who or what inspired your business?

Elizabeth: Thank you so much for the opportunity. You know, I think first, Jama, we should start by just acknowledging that flag right now is the fastest-growing girls’ sport in the country. And the NCAA made it an emerging sport back in January. There’s now more than 250 college programs, which is insane. It’s up 130% in just a year. The first NCAA championship is projected for 2028, which is the same year that the sport joins the Olympics out in LA.

So, sheflag.com is a free recruiting platform for girls who are playing flag football. And essentially, at SheFlag, we provide athletes with the opportunity to build profiles highlighting their athletic talents, to help them be recognized by coaches and recruited by colleges.

I personally spent 15 years working in professional sports before transitioning over to college athletics here at University of Michigan, where I was also a student athlete.

So I’ve literally experienced sports from every angle. And in a space where, you know, the growth is just happening so fast and colleges are creating new scholarship opportunities for young women, we recognized a gap. As the sport has exploded, no one built the infrastructure to really support athletes and parents throughout the recruiting journey.

Jama: That’s pretty amazing. To recognize that need and then develop a program and business to meet it is truly remarkable. That is so exciting. We can’t wait to see how this continues to develop. You have so many awesome things that you’ve already mentioned that makes your business unique. Maybe tell us some more about what makes Sheflag.com so unique?

Nancy: I think with SheFlag, at least for me, one thing that’s special is I had three kids that went through college and played college sports. I’ve gone through the entire recruiting process, but mainly what I came out with is what a unique and special opportunity it was for them, with growth and leadership and teams and just being a part of it all. It’s almost like having your own little fraternity and sorority in college, and it’s just a really neat opportunity.

What makes our platform unique is that it’s free. We’re trying to push away all the boundaries because really, it would be neat if every kid could play a sport in college if they wanted to. I think what allows us to produce that opportunity is the socioeconomic borders have all been wiped away. Everybody has the same place to start from and the same opportunity to build a profile and be found by colleges and coaches and have an opportunity to pursue their dreams and to be a part of something special. There’s really no words to put that in- to explain how unique an opportunity that is for just every single girl and woman and kid out there that wants to play college athletics.

Jama: I absolutely love that. My brain’s just going in all sorts of different places, even thinking about how high schools can use this tool and really just get our girls noticed and out there!